Google: Don't be evil...
Found this in my "to be published" folder.
Can't but still publish it.
Via MParent77772
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Who needs Wikileaks when you have Google?
Do this query on Google, and you will see things that you are not supposed to see.
The carbon footprint of a Google Search
IT research firm Gartner estimates Google's data centres contain nearly a million servers, each drawing about 1 kilowatt of electricity. So every hour Google's engine burns through 1 million kilowatt-hours. Google serves up approximately 10 million search results per hour, so one search has the same energy cost as turning on a 100-watt light bulb for an hour. (Full)Discovered via Daily Good Read the full post...
Yahoo does not exist anymore
They did not tell anyone, to keep them stocks floating high, but actually Yahoo does not exist anymore. It has become a virtual team of pre-teen hobbyists, working from their garage.
At least that is what I can tell from the (lack of) support for some of their products. Yahoo Pipes is one of them.
The Yahoo Pipes servers, previously running in a cloud-environment, have all been replaced by a single laptop owned by Johnny, a volunteer, in Santa Monica. When his mum cleans his room, and accidentally hits the power switch of his laptop, Yahoo Pipes goes down. Down until Johnny comes back from kindergarten. He is 5 years old, and mostly uses his laptop to play the "Musti" DVD.
The support for all their products is done by automated bots saying "Issue solved now, can you try it again, and report back if you experience more problems?".
They did consider to outsource the product support to a single call center in Bombay, which also caters for Johnny's Pizza Take-away, Rent-a-Girl Escort services and Gary's Route 66 Tow-away road service. It was too costly.
Yahoo apologizes for any possible inconvenience, but reminds its faithful clientele: "When reaching the bottom, there is only one way. Up!"
Market experts say this phrase has now shown up in several of Yahoo's press releases, which confirms the rumour all Yahoo services will soon be renamed as "Yahoo Up!", to distinguish from their current service level, which is now commonly referred to as "Yahoo Down!". It is said that the key to Yahoo's increased service level will be Sarah, the 6 year old girlfriend from Johnny. She just got her dad's old laptop for Xmas.
More satire on The Road.
Science Fiction: Read a newspaper online (1981)
A video from 1981 tells us from the 2,000 to 3,000 home computer users in the Bay area about 500 considered reading a newspaper online. "We can copy it and printing our own copy".
It took two hours at $5/hour to download the main articles...
Discovered via Weird News Files
Who is on Twitter from Iran?
Updated June 22 2009
Here is the updated list of Twitter-ers on the ground in Iran:
Google thinks I have more important things to say than Obama and Oprah combined
Google scans billion webpages several times per day. They give a numerical value to each webpage called "Pagerank", or "PR" for short.
The Pagerank is a sophisticated algorithm which indicates how 'valuable', or 'important' a webpage is. A PR varies from 0 to 10. The higher a PR, the more relevant a webpage is. There are millions of pages of a PR0, while there are just a handful with a PR10.
I just discovered Google valued my low key Twitter microblog much higher than the official Twitter blogs from Oprah and Barack Obama combined.
Source: PRchecker.info
My Twitter blog was pageranked 5, while Oprah's was 3 and poor Barack's Twitter blog got a PR0 (Yep, that is '0' like 'zero', 'nothing', 'ziltch'). Each of them have over a million of people reading their Twitter updates. I only have 419 'followers'.
Actually, I rated higher than the world's most popular Twitter blogs. Here are the most popular Twitter accounts:
Source: Twitterholic
You might ask yourself why Google rated me higher than the star of the world' most popular show (that is Oprah, not Obama), and the US president? Is it because I mostly write about humanitarian issues?
So would it be fair to say that for Obama and Oprah would start increasing their Twitter relevance if they'd emphasize humanitarian issues?
Now that's a thought!
Read the full post...
How do people read the news?
I have been dealing quite a bit with aggregating and distributing news lately, so I got curious as to how people actually read the news.
So I did a quick poll yesterday. I posted the poll on my blog and Reddit and twitter-ed the links.
On the question "What is the best way for you to follow the news?", 41 people answered. Not that 41 people is anywhere close to being representative to the population who has web access, grossomodo the results were evenly distributed between via a website, Twitter, feed aggregators and an RSS reader.
If you combine the fact that most news distributed via Twitter, Email and news aggregators is generated by RSS feeds, it is clear how important RSS has become as a way to syndicate content. Read the full post...
Back in Belgium
I swear: During the one week in Austria, I suffered from BDS: "Bandwidth Deficiency Syndrome". No Internet in the hotel and I did not want to pay for a local UMTS subscription, so had to resort to a Bluetooth connection via my mobile.
Even at 3G speeds (which I got only close to the window) the max I got was a "knitting speed" (an old joke us -software developers- used when typifying slow software as "a program where you'd better take up knitting while waiting for the routine to execute").
Man! We are spoiled with cable or ADSL connections, and wireless all over the house. I am double spoiled as I have lightning speed connections in my two homes, both in Belgium and Italy. I can sit in the garden under the fruit tree (and in Belgian terms, we live "in the middle of nowhere") and surf faster than in that Austrian hotel, amidst thousands of tourists..
Anyway, we're back in connectivity land, and catching up with Emails and things that happened in the world while I was virtually disconnected.
Let's end our Austrian adventure with a picture from a castle a mile from our hotel. If you look well, you can see the fairy princess leaning out of one of the top windows!! Brave knights: she's all yours! -- Just thinking: maybe she is calling for help on bandwidth problems too, ha!)
Peter is on Facebook. And does not like it. (understatement)
One needs to have an account on Facebook if you want to look at any postings any user makes. No wonder Facebook has billions and billions and billions of so-called users. (Statistics, ah!). So after I joined two years ago, and kept my foot tracks well covered, I am coming out (so to speak): My Facebook profile is now public.
Well, I already had 4 "friends" before I made my profile public. And I had not even used my real name.
But now you can be-friend me as if there were no tomorrow. Write on my wall like it was yours. Spam me with your applications and videos. Do it! Do it! ;-)))
So, just as I use Twitter, I want to play with what it can do and what it can't, as a social site, creating a community. Even if it was just to experiment.
And I don't like it. The user interface sucks. They made it an art turning something simple into something utterly complex. Is there a science in making software cumbersome for mere mortals? Is this what Computer Science PhDs make these days?
Apparently they just had a facelift (I never used the old 'Facebook' so can't compare), and no wonder 94% of the Facebook users don't like it.
I get utterly confused as what Facebook aims to be. A Twitter with pictures, and links? With some applications you can link into, as a sort of 'my webpage'. An iGoogle for non-techies? But why then, why do they have to make it so complicated?
I know posts of my blog are automatically imported to my Facebook, but - heaven is my witness - I can't find back where they put it.
I know I can put links in something they very significantly call 'my wall' (like I write on my wall at home, rrright), but why, then, why don't they let me edit the text that comes with the link?
I know Lydia wrote on my wall-to-wall (I got an email saying she did so), but I swear, I can't find it. And what a weird name "wall-to-wall". No wonder I feel claustrophobic each time I go onto Facebook.
I once got on a wall-to-wall with Sophie in China and wrote something on it, but no way to trace it back.
Every time I click on this or that, it asks for authorization to access my profile this and my approval for thing that and disclaimer of the other. Phew. It looks like I am signing my life away each time I click on something.
If people had to pay for Facebook, they would be left with a dozen users, I guess.
It smells like Microsoft a couple of years ago: people used it because it was the least painful of all evils. And just like Microsoft looses market bit by bit (look at the bad press Explorer is getting versus Chrome and Firefox), Facebook has only one way to do: Down baby...
Facebook? Beeeeh.
My alter ego or a system error?
I am active on several social bookmarking sites, and one of them is Mixx.
Today, something went wrong with their site and the users' thumbnail pictures all got mixed up, it seems.
Right now, according to them, this is how I look. Mmmm, I llllike it a llllot! Go Mixx, Go!
Update: Too late-- the problem seems to be resolved.. Ah. Thank you all for the 249 'Friend' invites in the last hour. I was a bomb on Mixx today. Just a clarification: I am 49 and male.
The power of the masses: online polling at Davos
Something to make you think of the power of the Internet:
Facebook's marketing manager Zuckerberg arranged for Facebook polls to be conducted during twelve key sessions at the Davos World Economic Forum.
In one poll, during a session called "Advice to the US President on Competitiveness", Facebook users were asked if the stimulus package is on target.
120,000 responses were recorded in twenty minutes (!). 59% of respondents said “no,” 15% said “yes” and 26% said unsure.
The poll results were displayed prominently above the panelists, including Rupert Murdoch (CEO News Corp.), Ellen Kullman (CEO DuPont), Duncan Niederauer (CEO NYSE Euronext), David Rubenstein (Managing Director, Carlyle Group) and Ronald Williams (CEO Aetna).
The panelists largely approved of the stimulus package in their comments before the poll results came in. Facebook users obviously disagreed. (Full)
While I am not sure how much this poll will steer to better target stimulus packages, it shows one thing clearly: the 'masses' are watching, have an opinion, and will speak out. This should make "those at the helm" more responsive, and hopefully more conscientious.
Picture courtesy TechCrunch
How reliable are (free) Internet services?
There was a meltdown at bookmark sharing website Ma.gnolia Friday morning. The service lost both its primary store of user data, as well as its backup. The site has been taken offline while the team tries to reconstruct its databases, though some users may never see their stored bookmarks again. (Full)
If you did a Google search yesterday, there is a good chance you saw the message "This site may harm your computer" for each and every search result. People called it an epic fail. Apparently it was a human error. And there was a human error trying to explain what the problem was too... (Full)
Pageflakes, my favourite tool to read RSS news feeds (see this post) went down two days ago.. Not a peep from their support services... Apparently other sites from their parent company LiveUniverse went down, including LiveVideo, MeeVee, and Revver.
Oh well, I am setting up my own RSS tool. On Google Apps.
Ooh, but is Google Apps not a free Internet tool too? Eh? And The Road to the Horizon is running on Blogger, another free Internet tool, no? Help. Time to panic. OMG! OMG! Breath! Breath!
The power of the Internet
I was sitting in my pj's in front of the window this morning, and got an email from Sue in Luanda, Angola. I answered and less than two minutes later, I got a reply.
It made me think of the time, back in 1994, when I was working in Angola. My family was in Belgium. The only way I could communicate with them was by fax (if the telephone lines and the electricity worked) or by radio. Often days, weeks would go by without contact.
In the first hour I got up today:
- I exchanged Emails with people in Angola, Sudan and Zambia
- I updated a spreadsheet on Google Apps shared with three people (I don't even know where they are in the world, I think one is in Nepal)
- Twittered with three people in the USA, UK and Tajikistan
- Had a Skype exchange with my friend at the Gaza/Egypt border
- Read an update from a friend in Afghanistan
- Checked a comment on our forum from a reader in Mexico
- Looked at a video posted at the Davos World Economic Forum about food security
- Saw that while I was sleeping, my blog was read by 763 people from 66 countries
Tips & Tricks: You might not recognize your blog
When I started this blog, I was naive. I thought I knew. I believed in technology. I thought the way I saw my blog was how everyone saw it.
A bit like when I was a kid. Then I thought when I would keep my hands over my eyes, nobody else in the world could see, because I could not see.
Same with my blog. I thought what I published, all of you would see the posts I would see it.
Now I know better. Now I know one thing: "I know nothing". And maybe that I will never know. And the fact that for the user, IT technology sucks.
What am I talking about? Internet browser compatibility!
Two years ago, I only used Internet Explorer. Until a friend told me that some of my posts looked weird on his computer. Text formatting around pictures was screwed up. Some widgets did not show correctly. Some stuff clearly ran outside of the main column. He showed it to me and "Yak!", he was not kidding.
He used Firefox. I had never heard of Firefox before (I told you I knew nothing!). I looked at my web statistics and found out quite a lot of visitors used Firefox. So a lot of people saw my blog differently than how I saw it.
So I downloaded Firefox, and from then on, I checked my blog both on Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Until another friend told me some of the stuff on my blog looked weird. I checked, and it did look weird. He used Safari on a Mac. I downloaded Safari.
Just in the last couple of months, I changed the layout of this blog significantly. Added drop-down menus, collapse/expand features, changed fonts, colours, template layouts,... And I tell you, it would take me typically a couple of hours to make the change, but two days to ensure it looks right on different browsers.
I can now understand the agony professional web developers have to go through during the final browser-compatibility testing. At work, we are developing a big portal website. And the developers are running past their delivery deadline. Why? Browser compatibility problems. Drives them nuts. And me too.
So nowadays, I check everything I publish on my blog in Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. Why? Because The Road's web statistics from the past few months show me this is what you use:
The worst is Internet Explorer. The worst of worst is Internet Explorer 6. I don't even check it anymore. It is hopeless. The only hope I have is that my visitors as sensible enough to either upgrade to Explorer 7, or to use a decent browser.
Besides formatting problems, Internet Explorer is slow (as I showed in the past) and often seems to get stuck while waiting for a page to load. Bleh!
So my tip for the serious blogger: Download the most popular browsers and test your site. The more features you add, and the more advanced those features are, the more thorough you have to test in different browsers.
Oh, and tip of the week: Try BrowserShots, a website that generates a screenshots of how your site looks like on dozens of different browsers, and on the different operating platforms (Windows, Linus, Mac).
Have fun, and I hope you don't get too many nasty surprises.
PS: If any of you experience problems viewing The Road, just comment on any post! As I said: "I know nothing!", so comments more than welcome! You can also help me with feedback on two different collapse/expand features, see also this post on The Road's discussion forum
More blogging tips and tricks on The Road.
Cartoon courtesy MediaWatch India Read the full post...
Picks of the week: Libraries in Africa, Ning and Plain English
Here are the interesting links I harvested this week:
- Room to Read partners with local communities throughout the developing world to provide quality educational opportunities by establishing libraries, creating local language children's literature, constructing schools, providing education to girls and establishing computer labs. They also feature on my post about meaningful Xmas gifts.
- You might think Facebook is "it", but I like Ning more as a highly customizable social network platform. It features blogs, forums, video and picture libraries, events scheduling all on an easy to use platform. I subscribed to ChangeBlogger network on Ning.
- You might have come across some of the Commoncraft ".. in Plain English" video tutorials, but have you checked out their library. All in Plain English, from "Electing a US president" to "Twitter" and "Social Media", all in short videos and in Plain English.
Some of their productions is also worth a look. (Watch the Google Docs video). - You would be surprised of the digital trail you leave on the Internet through your signature (your IP address). There are plenty of public domain tools available allowing anyone to trace back the origin of the visitor through that IP address. So.. should your activity can be monitored? Maybe you are a human rights activist, or you blog about controversial issues. TorProject allows you to 'hide' your entity, and 'go onto the web anonymously'
- And last but least, Technorati published their 2008 overview of the Blogosphere. Who are the bloggers? What is the impact on the Internet? Even just these figures are impressive: 184 million blogs active worldwide, reaching 346 million readers. 77% of active Internet users read blogs.
More Picks of the Week on The Road. Read the full post...
Rumble: Blogging tools - The Nerd Is Back !
The blogging nerds amongst you might find this interesting:
I just published a series of free blogging and webmaster tools I use daily. Have fun!
Picks of the week: 18th century 'Life' pictures and more
Here are the interesting links I harvested this week:
- Google has put millions of photographs from LIFE magazine online. The photo archive stretches from the 1750s to today. Most were never published before.
- DuckDown features funny pictures and cartoons to enlighten his posts. I have to admit, I don't read the text, but the graphics are great.
- The "Playing for Change Foundation" is dedicated to connecting the world through music by providing resources to musicians and their communities around the world.
- Ever thought of volunteering for a cause? You will not find a better resource than Online Volunteering, a site recently revamped by UNV, the UN agency coordinating volunteers. Opportunities vary from missions abroad to part-time work you can do from your sofa at home. Doing research, help writing or reviewing papers, translating documents or website management,.. From a few hours per week to full time for several months...
- Humanitarian Technology Net is this week's newcomer on the block. They focus on technology applicable in development or humanitarian relief projects.
- And last but least, if you are interested in innovation and development, the material on TED will keep you enticed for hours. After those hours, you will agree with me: TED - Technology, Entertainment and Design, inspires.
Picture courtesy Life (Margaret Bourke-White) Read the full post...
Rumble: Living in Italy - Part 4: Customer Service
I wrote this last year, but never posted it. Here we go.
Look at this. I am now the proud owner of a Fastweb ADSL modem with a WiFi interface in my Italian home. It only took me about four months to get connected.
Back in September, I picked up a Fastweb flyer from a booth at one of the shopping centers. Fastweb is one of Italy's main Internet Providers. The salesman checked online if my area could be connected to fast ADSL, and all seemed OK. He promised it would only take three weeks to get me online, even though I did not even have a physical telephone line in the house yet.
One thing you need to know about Italy: No matter how much I love this country, its culture, its food, its climate and its people, one thing they suck at is "service provision". So I was a bit suspicious about the guy's "three weeks".
The week after I got the flyer, I called the salesman, who wrote down my address, my credit card etc, and promised to get the connection request going.
After two weeks, nothing heard.
So I called him. The sales guy said: "No problem, all is OK! We are working on your request!". I answered: "But how can you start the connection procedure, I have not even signed the contract yet?". He answered: "But you gave your credit card number, so all is OK!".
Of course, nothing happened. A week went by without any news, and I called back to insisted on a copy of the contract so I could sign it. It took me three weeks to get a barely readable faxed copy.
Two weeks after signing the contract, still no sign of "connection"-life. The sales guy did not pick up my calls anymore, so I called the company. Nobody spoke English.
Vanessa, one of our admin assistants, was so kind to take over the phone and explain what I wanted: "The status of my connection request!". After 30 minutes, she put down the phone and sighed: "They can not find your original request..".
Two days later, without warning, a guy from Fastweb showed up in our office, and had me sign a new contract. Which I did.
To make a long story short, after many phone calls, with an increasingly aggravated Vanessa, (the poor thing!) trying to hold down her temper with the provider, I got an automatic phone call from the company asking to "Push 1 if my name was Peter...", "Push 2 if my mobile telephone number was..", "Push 1 if I indeed wanted to get an ADSL connection"...
A week later another automated phone call: "Push 1 if my name was Peter...",.. These calls kept on coming, once per day. At 8 pm, like clockwork: "Push 1 if my name was Peter...". But for the rest, not a peep from the company.
Vanessa started to call them again requesting for a status. And she called. And she called.
Six weeks later, out of the blue, a human being called me for an appointment to connect the telephone line. You have no idea of surprise and happiness. Even better: the guy actually showed up on the agreed day and time, and my telephone line was connected in a matter of minutes.
Five days later, someone else showed up to install the actual ADSL modem, and.. I was online...! In five months only!
I just tested the speed with this gimmick and I got 4,500 kbps download and 300-400 kbps upload. Not bad, if you realize I live in a pretty rural area... I am a happy camper! Have Internet, Will Blog!!
Update 1 - One day after getting connected: Fastweb called "to make an appointment to connect my telephone line". I answered: "But you guys installed it yesterday!". They insisted this was not possible and wanted to come by to install the telephone line...
It turned out I now had TWO contracts with the company. And they kept on calling me..
Update 2 - One week after getting connected, Vanessa calls them to cancel one of the two contracts. Panic: they can't find the first contract anymore.
Update 3 - One month after getting connected: They call me. Vanessa is not around. In broken English, they ask me if I am connected. "Si!", I answer. If they can cancel one of the two contracts. "Si! Si!", I begged.
Update 4 - Six weeks after getting connected: An automated phone call at 8 pm: "Push 1 if my name was Peter...",..
What do you think? Should I install a second ADSL modem, just in case? :-)))
PS: Vanessa: I can not thank you enough for your help! Mmmmwah!
More posts on The Road about Living in Italy
Cartoon courtesy glasbergen.com
Rumble: I have one question left...
You know in the past months I have been working on increasing the download speed of The Road to the Horizon. It seems the choice of your browser is as important as me optimising the site.
Look at these... The Javascript speed of Chrome -the new Google freeware browser- and Firefox beating up Internet Explorer.
Knowing also the problems Internet Explorer has in seemingly "hanging" for seconds when downloading pages, I have only one question left in my mind:
Why did I wait so long to abandon Explorer?
Graph courtesy cnet.com Read the full post...
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Peter. Flemish, European, aid worker, expeditioner, sailor, traveller, husband, father, friend, nutcase. Not necessarily in that order.
@abzole
@adoostdar
@alirezasha
@anonymousiniran
@avahedi
@azarnoush
@bahadorn
@Bahram81
@bta_f
@Change_for_Iran
@duckdaotsu
@fafamx
@farnamb
@Ghattavi
@gita (protected)
@hamednz
@huti_421
@iran09
@iranbaan
@IranElection09
@IranPishi
@IranRiggedElect
@IranUltimatum
@jadi
@jimsciuttoABC (left?)
@jubinahdi
@knv
@LaraABCNews
@madyar
@mahdi (protected)
@mehri912
@mhrshd
@MiladRevolution
@mohamadreza (protected)
@mohandesalireza
@monshi
@mousavi1388
@Mynumberone1988
@mtux (protected)
@openiran
@parastoo
@parhamdoustdar
@persiankiwi
@pleasesaveiran
@PouyanA
@ralavi
@ramezanpour (protected)
@SadeqEn (protected)
@sasan_j
@Shahrzadmo
@smileofcrash
@StopAhmadi
@TehranBureau
@tehranelection
@VoiceofIran
@willyong
@WhereIsMyVoteIr
@zahrahb
For a good real-time overview of the latest Twitter updates and news overview on the post-election protests, check Twazzup.
Update: June 19
There has been an active debate on other blogs and websites whether or not we should publish this list. See also the comments on this post.
Do we put people's lives in danger? I asked some of the Twitterers in Iran, but did not get an answer.
My view is: Nobody in Iran will come onto a public medium unless they consciously choose to do so. All of them hide their real identity, and actively request people to re-broadcast the information they are giving from the ground, especially as the traditional media have been put on restraint.
An interesting post on this subject, you find on the Traveller Within.
Update: June 20
On my own initiative, I deleted those who did not seem to take enough precautions in hiding their identity.
Update: June 22
On the same topic, this tweet came out today: "@shahrzadmo: State TV: Send your videos to Police so they recognise the "rioters" and arrest them!"... Does this also mean bloggers around the world should not republish YouTube videos from the protests, so people don't get identified?
For an overview of the role of social media in "post-election Iran", check this post.
Input thanks to h3x.no, reddit.com, Mohamed, Simon, Daily Dish and fellow twitter users.
Picture courtesy Madyar